Wake Co. DA To Consider Community "Message" About Capital Punishment

WAKE COUNTY -- The decision by 12 Wake County jurors not to send convicted killer Travion Smith to death row for murdering a Raleigh mother in 2013 is sparking a conversation about capital punishment cases. 

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman says this is the sixth death penalty case in a role where the jury recommended a sentence of live in prison without parole instead of the death penalty. 

The last death sentence in Wake County was in 2007.

Last year executions and new death sentences reached historic lows nationwide.

"This is the sixth case in a row that we've sought the death penalty and not gotten it, and I do think at some point we have to step back and say, has the community sent us a message on that?" District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said.

“The death penalty seems to be fading away in its use in North Carolina.  It's the same nationally, the use of the death penalty and executions have reached historic lows,” said Kristin Collins with The Center for Death Penalty Litigation.

Since 2007 there have been seven states that have repealed the death penalty.